


craving

by Batik



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-06-07
Packaged: 2019-05-19 08:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,649
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14870096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Batik/pseuds/Batik
Summary: No regrets.





	craving

**Author's Note:**

> I count June 6 as the anniversary date of my joining the hockey fandom. It's been three years (as of yesterday). This is a little token of my appreciation.
> 
> Also, there's a reason they call it fiction.

The grass under his feet was thick and cool and soft, blades tickling between Sid’s toes as he ignored the path and beelined down the slope of his backyard toward the water.

It was a big yard, surrounded by trees, but the landscapers had made sure the grass was carpet-thick and the kid two doors down did a great job of keeping it mowed and wayward twigs picked up. Sid compensated him generously, knowing full well that a) he could afford it and b) the kid funneled all of his summer cash back into hockey equipment and training the rest of the year.

He’d seen the kid play — it was money well-spent.

A few more steps and Sid was on his dock, the wood planks retaining the barest bit of residual heat from the day’s sun, which now sat low on the horizon and cast the dock in shadow. Sid made his way down the length of the span before sitting and letting his legs dangle off the end, feet ankle-deep in the glassy water.

He sighed, loud in his own ears, and set down the beer he had grabbed from his fridge as an afterthought on his way out the back door. Then he leaned back on his palms and looked out over the water.

There were a few boats still out, neighbors who, with home so close, were willing to chase the last bits of daylight from the water. Along with warning lights on dock ends around the water’s edge, lights were starting to illuminate houses across the lake like small clusters of fireflies frozen in place. It did nothing to deter the actual fireflies amid the trees and Sid focused on them for a moment, watching for one flash to end before trying to figure out where it would reappear. He didn’t have much luck at it, but there was no one there to know if he lost a game he was playing with himself.

After a few minutes of concentrated effort, Sid gave up on figuring out the fireflies and adjusted his focus back to the water, which had largely gone dark except for one streak that sparkled under the last touch of sun. Being on a lake, he didn’t really get tides or waves, but the occasional passing boat created a gentle wake that lapped at his legs and the supports of his dock. The sound, interspersed with the occasional splash of a fish, was hypnotic and soothing. Another time, when he had one of his rods with him, he thought as he felt what likely was a minnow brush by his toes. 

He breathed in deeply, the smell of grass and trees and lake water filling his nose. He loved his lake, in all of its moods, from early morning to late night, sunshine or thunderstorm, summer or winter, even if the lake never fully froze and, thus, was never viable for skating.

As it always was, being on the water was a balm to his bruised soul, but this time it wasn’t fully easing the discontent he’d been feeling since he’d arrived home a month ago, hours after shutting up his house in Pittsburgh and taking a private flight out, days after the season had ended, weeks after he had announced that the Pens’ playoffs run would be his last.

It was annoying, to be honest.

Sid had no regrets. He had developed a plan for his life when he was still a kid, and that plan had never changed. He had made it happen, willed it into being with his own stubbornness and his belief in his parents’ insistence that hard work paid off.

And he would never not consider himself the luckiest man on the planet for getting to live his dream for so long. The awards, the money? Perks, for sure. But he never really needed them as long as he could make a living skating and playing hockey.

If that had meant missing out on a lot of teenage rites of passage, it was more than worth it. None of his friends had great memories of prom, but his memories of World Juniors were phenomenal.

He didn’t even truly regret his various injuries over the years. Sure, they had kept him off the ice (and worried his mom), and he had hated it at the time. And he would never recommend a concussion or a broken jaw to anyone, even if there had been a few times when he thought it would be more than fair if the NHL’s punishment fit the crime.

But his injuries and how he had suffered through them and overcome them and ignored everyone when they questioned if his best days had been lost? Those had shaped him and his play as much as the endless drills and his painstaking attention to detail had.

And he’d escaped, best any of the doctors could tell at this point, with his brain intact. For that, he’d always be grateful.

In the end, he’d even managed an extra year of play, not a desperate “he should have hung up his skates years ago” season but a good season, a solid season, a season more than he’d always thought he’d have. A season after Geno had retired — his knee, his shoulder, his elbow teaming up to force him out — and disappeared to Russia and his various business ventures there.

Sid inhaled shakily as a bird swooped low across the water, the movement pulling his gaze away from where he’d been staring unseeingly at the lake’s surface. He let his eyes follow it as the bird dove into the water and resurfaced, a small fish in its beak. A gulp or two and the fish was gone. Another moment and the bird was, too.

And Sid’s focus was back on his bare toes, possibly starting to prune a bit in the water. He nudged at a leaf as it drifted by, his thoughts drifting with it.

It wasn’t as if retirement was the end of his time on the ice. He had his hockey school, expanded now, since he no longer had to squeeze it in around training and playing. He’d set up his foundation to offer scholarships, to make it attainable to just about any kid who had promise and a determination to succeed.

He also still had the Little Pens, and time to be even more involved. He had his private lessons.

He wasn’t going to retire and simply wither away with half of his life likely still ahead of him.

He had everything he’d ever dreamed of and then some.

_Except someone to share it with_ , a traitorous voice whispered.

But that was the deal he’d made with himself years ago and he refused to regret it now. Regardless of statistics that indicated every team in the NHL likely had at least one gay or bisexual player, there never had been room in The Room for an openly gay man.

And Sid’s skill had drawn a target on his back long before he ever realized that his appreciation for a tall, well-muscled male body went far beyond simple appreciation for what such a body allowed a player to do on the ice. It was an easy decision not to make that target bigger, and he’d always been careful to ensure his rare hookups were both discreet and with men who had as much to lose as he did.

If that meant he also lost his shot at something more permanent, well, he refused to regret it. His determination was legendary and he would not regret his choices.

No matter how nice it would be to have someone beside him right now, sharing the calm of the evening, the quiet lapping of the water at the pilings and the shore, the way various bits of light were dancing across the water.

A breeze wafted by, tickling Sid’s nose and he shifted his weight onto one hand to scrub at his nose — and then his eyes — with the other. If he did it quickly enough, out here with no one to see, then maybe it never happened.

The sniffle that followed never happened either. Or maybe it was allergies.

He was so busy ignoring what _definitely wasn’t happening_ that he almost missed what _was_ , a sound he didn’t hear so much as simply register on a subconscious level. Startled out of his own mind, Sid jerked around to look behind him, his hand swinging into the long-forgotten beer bottle and knocking it over, its contents spilling across the wood and through the slats.

Whatever, let the fish enjoy. There was someone at the top of his dock, walking his way. Sid scrambled to stand, breathless with adrenaline, and then found himself rooted in place.   
Even in the dusk, he recognized that silhouette. The length and breadth of it had been carved into his very soul a lifetime ago.

The man kept walking until he was directly in front of Sid, close enough for Sid to make out his features, watch as a swirl of emotions played across his face.

“Geno,” he said, both a question and not before words failed him. He searched Geno’s face, holding his breath.

“Sid,” Geno said, his voice breaking on the single syllable.

Geno raised one hand to cradle Sid’s face, a thumb tracing his cheekbone as long fingers grazed the shell of his ear, the sensitive bone behind, the hinge of his jaw.

Sid shuddered at Geno’s touch, both reverent and seismic. It settled Sid in his skin, like sediment filling in his cracks.

Then Geno’s lips were on his and Sid shattered, shards of him surely reaching the early evening moon before gravity pulled him back down and he was drowning in points of contact — warm fingers, soft lips, his hand in Geno’s shirt, reeling him in. 

Nope. No regrets.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes, I just really want to be near water.


End file.
